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Our National Crisis. 



- 



THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS PROP Eli FOB OFR 
NATIONAL CRISIS. 



A SERMON 



; 



DELIVERED ON SABBATH EVENING, APRIL '23, 1865. 



By HENRY SMITH, D. D., 

Pastor of the Xorth Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, N. F, 









BUFFALO : 
PRINTING HOUSE OF MATTHEWS & WARREN, 

Office of the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser. 

1865. 



C5- 



Buffalo, April 26, 1865. 
Rev. Henry Smith, D. D., 

Dear Sir: — The sermon of last Sabbath evening, devoted 

to the consideration of the sentiments proper to he cherished by 

our citizens in the present crisis of the nation, was listened to by a 

a large and intelligent congregation with profound respect. 

Appreciating the importance of those religions and civil truths, 

enunciated and so elocpiently enforced by you upon that occasion, 

and being desirous that society may profit from a more extended 

diffusion of sentiments so elevated and honorable to humanity, 

thereby promoting the great interests of Christianity and good 

government, we respectfully solicit a copy of the discourse for 

publication. 

Very truly yours, 



LEWIS F. ALLEN, 
GEO. R. BABCOCK, 
PASCALL P. PRATT, 
E. P. BEALS, 
J AS. D. WARREN, 
H. R. KETCHUM, 
WM. B. FLINT, 
R. D. SHERMAN, 
C. E. YOUNG, 



D. TAYLOR, 
JAS. SHELDON, 
O. P. RAMSDELL, 
O. L. NIMS, 
C. W. HARVEY, 
II. STILLMAN, 
.TASoN SEXTON, 
A. J. RICH, 



F. W. BREED, 
C. W. BUTLER, 
OSCAR COBB, 
F. P. WOOD, 
GEO. WADSWORTH, 
J. V. W. AXNIX, 
R. S. BURROWS, 
S. M. CHAMBERLAIN. 



Buffalo, April 26, 1865. 

Hon. Messrs. Allen, Babcock, Sheldon, and others, 

Gentlemen: — The sermon to which your note refers, though 
rapidly written, in the discharge of the ordinary weekly duties of 
the preacher's work, contains sentiments which have long held 
with me the authority of fixed principles. I am happy to find them 
substantially endorsed by gentlemen so well qualified as yourselves 
to judge of the duties and responsibilities of American citizenship. 
In compliance with your request, I place the manuscript in your 

hands. 

I am, very truly yours, 

Henry Smith. 



A SERMON. 



Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth. — 1 Samuel, hi: 9. 

You will not fail to remember the occasion on which 
this solemn appeal to Jehovah, invoking a divine com- 
munication, was made. It was the dictation of the head 
of the Hebrew hierarchy, and the Chief Magistrate of 
the nation, to that consecrated child who was destined 
by God hereafter to become the leader and prophetic 
teacher of the people. The period was one of univer- 
sal popular, political, and religious corruption. Nay 
more, this corruption had reached the very fountains 
of power. The springs of the national life were tainted 
by the reckless violation of the constitution of the gov- 
ernment, civil and ecclesiastical, at the hands of the ac- 
credited rulers of the land. The cup of the divine 
patience was full to overflowing. The tempest of God's 
wrath hung black and heavy over the guilty nation. 
The fiery bolts of retribution were just ready to break 



8 

forth, when the Majesty of heaven summoned the at- 
tention of the prophet-child by that mysterious call, 
to which the words of the text are the reply dictated 
by the aged high-priest and judge of Israel: — "Speak, 
Lord, for thy servant heareth." Listen to the response : 
" Behold I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the 
ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle." What 
that thing was, you remember well. The land was 
drenched in blood ; and the high priest and chief ma- 
gistrate of Israel fell dead under the stroke of God. 
I shall attempt to run no parallel between the moral 
condition of the Hebrew commonwealth under the ad- 
ministration of Eli, and our own to-day. In some par- 
ticulars it fails. In others it is strikingly similar. God 
has often spoken to us as a nation in the soft and per- 
suasive accents of his mercy, and we have refused to 
hear. Now he has spoken to us, as he did to them, 
in the thunders of his righteous indignation. He has 
done to us already that awful thing, at which both the 
ears of every hearer have tingled. The whole land is 
draped in the weeds of mourning. Every temple of 
God in the loyal States bears, or has borne, within 
the last week, the sable livery of woe. The heart of 
the nation is broken. The voice of the whole 2^eople 
has burst into one loud wail of lamentation. There is 
not a loyal man or woman in the land whose bosom 
this last arrow from the quiver of the Almighty has 



9 

not pierced to tlie core. Are we ready at length to 
listen to the voice of God ? True, indeed, Ave have 
hardly yet recovered our equanimity. This tempest of 
grief has burst suddenly upon us, like a tornado upon 
a populous sea-port. The great waves of emotion have 
driven us from our moorings ; some, it may be, in one 
direction, and some in another. But the storm has 
passed. The mountain billows are subsiding. Is it not 
time that we at least begin to make the effort to come 
to our anchorage? Taught by this fearful calamity, it 
may be that we can find a firmer bottom, a safer hold- 
ing ground, for the flukes of our national faith. In ad- 
dressing you last Sabbath morning, I raised the ques- 
tion : " What are the Christian duties which are indi- 
cated by the present circumstances of the nation ? " 
The topic was deferred to a calmer moment. I recur 
to it this evening. But as all right action is preceded 
and conditioned by right sentiment, let me change the 
form of the subject and ask your attention for a little 
while to, 

THE SENTIMENTS PEOPEE TO BE CHEBISHED IX THE PEES- 
EXT XATIOXAL CEISIS. 

Stunned and prostrated by this last terrible blow 
from the hand of God, it may be we have hardly yet 
sufficiently recovered, distinctly to understand his voice. 
Nevertheless, while the awe of his Divine Majesty is 



10 

yet upon our spirits, it surely behooves us to present 
ourselves before the holy oracle of his Truth, saying: 
Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. 

What response do Ave begin already to hear? If I 
do not altogether misunderstand the voices of God's 
providences, interpreted by the light of the Holy Scrip- 
tures, they may be summed up in one great word — 

Faith. 

My friends, that series of great and terrible events 
which for the last four years has engrossed the heart 
of the nation, and which has just culminated in the 
brutal murder of the Chief Magistrate of the Rejmb- 
lic, summons our attention to-night not so much to 
those aspects of Christian faith, which stand connected 
with the question of personal salvation, as to those as- 
pects of it which bear upon national ethics and our 
civil duties. The entire secular and religious press of 
the land recognizes now, as never before, the great 
truth that God is speaking to the whole nation. What 
we are summoned, therefore, to do, is to endeavor to 
catch the articulate accents of that awful voice, as in- 
terpreted by the teachings of his holy word. The voice 
which we all have heard from heaven, audible and dis- 
tinct, is this: Have faith in God. We believe that 
God has spoken. We admit that this is the solemn 
utterance of the oracle of the Divine Providence. But 



11 

what does it mean \ What are its applications ? These 
questions remain to be considered, and to be answered 
by the responses of divine revelation. Let us endea- 
vor to elicit at least a portion of these responses. This 
awful voice, then, seems to me to say to us — 

I. First of all, Have faith in your Institutions of 
National Government. 

By this is not meant that our institutions of national 
government are absolutely perfect ; much less is it meant 
that they can work themselves. They are simply an 
instrument in the hands of an intelligent, virtuous, and 
God-fearing people for the accomplishment of the very 
highest ends of civil government; and in this aspect 
they are worthy of our most hearty confidence. 

1. We are to have faith in their essential rio-hieous- 
ness. We are not left without a light from God's 
Word, reflected upon this very point. Our national in- 
stitutions were framed around the great idea which 
has been so admirably expressed by our incoming Pres- 
ident, that "Government w"as made for man, and not 
man for Government." This governmental frame-work 
has been pronounced by the most intelligent and phi- 
losophic, as well as sympathetic and admiring foreign 
observer, who has yet attempted to analyze the forces 
of our political life, to be not a federal, but an incom- 
plete national government. In the sense intended by 



12 

him, this, is perfectly true, and I shall Lave occasion to 
refer to it again. I allude to it now simply to direct 
your attention to the fact, that this so-called incomplete 
national government is the very form and frame-work 
of human government prescribed by God himself, for 
the accomplishment of the very end had in view by 
the framers of our own institutions. Look at the struc- 
ture of the Hebrew Republic, as it came from the hands 
of its divine architect. Twelve distinct, and, in some 
sense, independent states, each having its own distinct 
territory, with -perfectly denned geographical bounda- 
ries; each having its lands distributed among the fam- 
ilies composing it and possessed in fee-simple by the 
tillers of the soil; each having its own rulers, elected 
by the free suffrages of the people; each having its 
own system of jurisprudence, connected by the principle 
of appeals with the very highest judicatory in the land. 
From the elders of his city to the elders of his tribe ; 
from the elders of his tribe to the great national 
council of the Seventy, every man might carry his 
claim for justice to the highest judicatory in the land. 
I can not go into details. But above all this sys- 
tem of personal and tribal freedom and justice, sat the 
Supreme Government of the land, jwssessed of a writ- 
ten constitution, sovereign within its own limited sphere 
of sovereignty, with God as its executive head, charging 
itself with the education of the nation, with the incul- 



13 

cation upon tlie minds of the whole people of the great 
principles of the National Constitution, civil and religi- 
ous ; holding the balances of national justice, and 
through the responses of the Urim and the Thummini, 
claiming also, I think, as well, the right of making 
peace and war. Such in substance was the frame-work 
of the Hebrew government, as it came from the hand 
of God. Well has a clear-headed writer said of it, " It 
preserved in the hands of the people as much personal 
liberty as ever was or can be combined with a perma- 
nent and efficient national government." This land of 
ours was settled by men who believed in God. Free- 
dom ! — " Freedom to worship God," was the great sen- 
timent which peopled this new world. Is it any won- 
der that neeino; from the edicts of the star-chambers 
and blood-councils of Europe; from the feudalism and 
despotism of the old world; from countries whose ani- 
mus was not " government for man, but man for gov- 
ernment," these men should have carefully investigated 
the principles of Bible liberty? that they should most 
anxiously have inculcated upon their children those great 
principles of civil and religious freedom which they 
found everywhere in the word of God ? Is it any won- 
der that their descendants, taught by their precepts, and 
breathing their spirit, when the great task of framing 
a national government was devolved upon them, should 
have turned their eyes reverently to these venerable gov- 



u 

i 

erninental institutions of the Hebrews ? So far as the 
differing circumstances of the times seemed to permit, 
the framework of our national government, in its great 
essential features, was a reproduction of that of the He- 
brews. The spirit of justice, righteousness, liberty and 
equal rights is its animating spirit. The word slave 
was odious to the framers of our national constitution. 
It is not to be found in that venerable instrument. 
And if the local institutions of some of the States 
forced upon it a tacit recognition of the existence of 
slavery in the country, it is a matter of devout thanks- 
giving to God, that the great bulwark of our national 
life needs no alteration to adapt it to that condition 
of universal liberty which the act of God, overruling 
the madness of Treason inflamed by the spirit of op- 
pression, is giving to the whole land. Even the lam- 
entable omission of a direct recognition of God, in con- 
secjuence of which the document has been charged with 
political atheism, can not convict it of atheism. It 
breathes the spirit of God's own teachings, as touching 
the frame-work of civil and religious liberty ; and it is 
no violation, but rather an outgrowth, of the sjurit of 
the American constitution that the coin of the United 
States is henceforth to bear the great legend, " In God 
we trust." The frame-work of our national institutions 
is essentially righteous. The institutions of government 
which have legitimately sprung from it are essentially 



15 

righteous. And the voice of God's Providence, which 
for four long and terrible years has been waxing 
louder and louder, and which to-day is sounding in 
onr ears as with the blast of trumpet, seems to me 
to say: Have faith in the righteousness of these in- 
stitutions ; beware of violating them ; beware of corrupt- 
ing them. 

2. But again that voice says to us : Have faith in 
the permanence of these national institutions. 

Our national government has been called an experi- 
ment. It is so. It is an experiment testing the ques- 
tion whether popular liberty and political equality can 
exist on earth. It is an experiment testing the ques- 
tion whether a government founded in the spirit of 
the principle that " government was made for man, and 
not man for government," can possibly bear the strain 
to which the evil forces of ambition and despotism will 
subject it: whether in the long procession of the ages 
we have yet reached the point of human civilization 
in which, under an organized human government, man 
as man, all men, of all shades of color, of all types of 
intellect, of all grades of wealth, can stand before the 
common Father of the Universe, possessed of equal 
civil and religious rights: can each one of them, with 
no slave-driver's lash brandished above him, with no 
ensign of civil or ecclesiastical despotism waving over 
him, look up to God and say, Father, I am a man ; 



16 

I am a freeman; made in thine image; bound by my 
conscience to thy holy government: Speak, Lord, for 
thy servant heareth and will obey? My friends, it 
is useless to deny it, we have all had our fears touch- 
ing the issue of this great experiment of popular lib- 
erty. We have had occasion to fear. I have heard 
men in Buffalo say this government can not survive. 
And the rise and fall of o;old, following the disasters 
and successes of the national arms, have spoken these 
fears when the tongue has not uttered them. Perhaps 
the fears of the most intelligent thinkers among us have 
gathered chiefly around the most apparent point of 
weakness in our civil institutions : I mean the point of 
a Divided Sovereignty. I have already referred to the 
remark of De Tocqueville, that our general government 
is not a federal, but, in distinction from it, an incomjnete 
national government. It is easier, he says, to invent 
new tilings than new names. The American govern- 
ment is a new thins; under the sun. It is a new tiling 
with an old name — a Federal Republic. In all other 
confederations, as for example the Swiss, the central 
government has acted not upon the people, but upon 
the states. In this it acts directly upon the people. 
Forgetting, it would seem, the Hebrew Republic, lie 
pronounces the American Government a new thing in 
the world. It is not, therefore, what it calls itself, a 
Federal Republic, but an incomplete nationality. Find- 



17 

ing the idea of sovereignty in the power of enacting laws, 
and finding this power divided between the states and 
the central government, he recognizes in our institu- 
tions the existence of a divided sovereignty. That is 
not our idea of sovereignty in America. But, neverthe- 
less, here he finds the point of our national weakness ; 
a weakness, in his opinion, so great, that in case of a 
foreign war, the government would be unable to cope 
with the power of a consolidated monarchy, of equal re- 
sources, in its immediate vicinity. The states, he thinks, 
whose interests should be impaired by the war, would 
find pretexts, as did Connecticut and Massachusetts in 
1812, for disobeying the mandates of the central gov- 
ernment, and the government would go to wreck. But 
happily, he says, we have no such war to fear. Sepa- 
rated from the consolidated governments of Europe by 
a wide and stormy ocean, we are safe. Having noth- 
ing to fear from abroad, he pronounces our national 
institutions, impossible elsewhere, admirably adapted to 
our peculiar geographical position on the globe. Little 
did he foresee the tremendous strain which was to be 
put upon our government by this same perverted doc- 
trine of a divided sovereignty ; yea, more, from the 
claim of the handmaid to be the mistress, reducing the 
general government from the rank of a sovereign to 
that of a mere commercial agent. This, as you well 
know, is the pestilent theory of Secession. We have 



18 

lived it down; we have fought it through; and the 

hydra of Secession will never again rear its hissing head 
upon this continent. The nation has demonstrated its 
perfect nationality. We have had for years nothing to 
fear from abroad. We have no longer anything to fear 
at home. When the sun of peace, whose blessed beams 
now gild and glorify our national horizon, shall reveal 
to our eyes its full-orbed splendor, it will shine upon 
the dishonored grave of the institution of American 
Slavery: an institution whose lying appeals to human 
cupidity, lust, and thirst for power, could alone have 
seduced men, whom God had gifted Avith an intellect, 
a heart and a conscience, to adopt and act irpon so 
absurd a doctrine. Slavery will be dead and buried, 
and with slavery dead, the whole wide field of the nation 
will be open to the action of free schools, a free press, 
a free pulpit, and a free Bible. Corrupt indeed and 
recreant to her high trust will the Church of God in 
America have become if our national government shall 
ever again be put in peril by the awful ferocities of 
civil war. The voice of God's providence, then, inter- 
preted by the blessed humanities of his holy gospel, 
bids us to have faith in the permanence of our na- 
tional institutions. Treason has done its worst ivpon 
us. It has just dealt an expiring blow, which would 
have thrown France into convulsions, and prostrated 
its imperial government in the dust. What has it done 



19 

to us ? It has pierced the heart of the nation with 
an inexpressible sorrow. It has clad her in the weeds 
of mourning, and brought her to bow herself in 
an agony of grief before the Majesty of Heaven. 
That is all. The government lives. Its regular action 
has not been disturbed for a moment. Our free in- 
stitutions still live. Let us believe it, they shall live 
forever. 

We will turn now to another interpretation of 
the voice of God's Providence. It is this: 

II. Have faith in your National Mulers. 

My friends, it is very difficult for us to have faith 
in man. We know too well, from our own hearts, his 
weakness and his corruptibility. " Let us fall now," 
said David, "into the hand of God, for his mercies 
are great, but let me not fall into the hand of man." 
Nevertheless, men are God's instruments, and in cer- 
tain relations faith in God necessitates and renders 
imperative faith in man. Most conspicuous among 
these relations is that which exists between subjects 
and rulers. Civil government, of whatever form, is 
from God. The powers that be, are ordained of God. 
Even under bad and tyrannical governments, the word 
of God counsels submission, and, so far forth as obe- 
dience does not conflict with the claims of God's uni- 
versal sovereignty and the homage of the individual 

3 



20 

soul due to him, it counsels obedience. Paul lost his 
head under the tyranny of Nero, but he never lifted 
his hand against it. Ignatius was torn bv the lions 
of the Coliseum under the despotism of Trajan, but so 
far from rebelling, he blessed the hand which placed 
upon his brow the crown of martyrdom. The very 
slaves themselves are enjoined to be subject to their 
masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, 
but also to the froward. — What then ? Does God's 
word sanction despotism? No. But it commands those 
who are subject to it, and who by no legal methods 
can reach it, to leave the removal of it to Him. How 
he can and will remove it he has taught us most im- 
pressively in that great national tragedy which has now 
reached its fifth act. He sends a spirit of madness 
upon the despot and places in his hand a dagger, 
wherewith to slay himself. God makes no provision 
in his word for rebellion and regicide. It must needs 
be under the Holy Providence of God that such of- 
fences come, but woe be to those men by whom they 
come. Passive obedience, and submission to wrong, is 
the counsel of God's word, even under tyrannies. But 
what shall we say of the sentiments of citizens to- 
wards rulers, under a free popular government like our 
own? This government, as we have seen, was formed 
upon a model devised by the wisdom of God himself. 
Its great principles are essentially righteous. Its foun- 



21 

dations are laid in tlie great doctrines of justice, equi- 
ty, equal riglits, and universal liberty. The legitimate 
action of sncli a government must be righteous. The 
men who are placed in power under the legitimate 
movements of such a government, should command not 
only our civil obedience, but our hearty sympathy, 
support, and confidence. All maligning of the private 
character of Rulers, all factious opposition to their 
measures, are blows stricken at the heart of liberty. 
Aye, but suppose they are bad men ? Suppose they 
do not represent the principles of the government, and 
our views of the policy which the exigencies of the 
nation demand? What then? Are we then to ap- 
prove? to give them our confidence? On this point 
two words. 

1. By possibility we may be wrong. By possibility 
they may not be the utterly bad men which a parti- 
zan press, in a contested election, may have taught us 
to believe them. By possibility their policy does not so 
utterly misrepresent the will of God and the true and 
fundamental principles of the government as our own 
associations have led us to fear. Even if we do not 
admit the truth of the maxim that the vox popiili is 
the vox Dei, the presumption is that after all the light 
which has been thrown upon the issues of a contested 
election, by an omnipresent press, everywhere doing 
its work among a reading people, the decision which 



22 

is readied by the final suffrages of such a people will 
be essentially right; at least that it can not be so far 
wrong as fatally to compromise the great principles of 
the government. The great struggle which has been 
upon us has taught us the duties of minorities under 
a government like this. It is to submit. Yea more, 
it is to yield a cheerful support to the rulers who 
represent the will of the people, and embody the 
sovereignty of the land. All honor to those noble 
millions, who, differing in their views of national 
policy from that which found an expression in the 
election of our present rulers, rallied around the 
government in the hour of its supreme trial ; who laid 
aside their political animosities, forgot their political 
prejudices, and have stood for four long and terrible 
years "a wall of fire around the ark of our liberties." 
Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and all sympathy 
with it under such a government as this is a crime 
against the last hope of human freedom, in a world 
like ours. Eternal infamy, therefore, to that traitorous 
element in our loyal states; to that nest of venomous 
vipers, desperate and debauched in moral and politi- 
cal character, and, let us hope in God, insignificant in 
numbers as well, which from pot-houses, brothels and 
theatres, has spit its traitorous spite at the constituted 
authorities of the country; and which, at last, has 
found an expression, faithfully representing its spirit, 



23 

in the most enormous Crime which stains the bloody 
annals of our guilty world. 

2. But again, by possibility we may be right. By 
possibility the people may be wrong. What then is 
to be done ? Where is now the remedy to be found ? 
Certainly not in endeavoring to obstruct the wheels 
of government, nor in a factious opposition to the 
rulers, whom the free suffrages of the people have 
placed in authority. A government like ours can not 
possibly long stand among a people too ignorant to 
comprehend its principles, or too corrupt to sustain 
them. It will fall by its own weight. It will jmss 
away by the act of God. But when it falls the last 
hope of popular liberty will fall with it. This indeed 
has been the expectation and the prophecy of despots 
all over the world, as touching the fate of our own 
Republic. It has found, as you know, during this 
rebellion, a practical expression in European govern- 
ments, from which we had expected better things. 
But this government is not to fall. The hand of God 
has been over it, and, so long as we remain faithful 
to Him, will be over it forever. How awfully has he ad- 
monished us of the high and solemn responsibility which 
attaches to the character of an American citizen. How 
solemnly has he admonished us to place our jiolitical 
opinions, our civil action, and our judgment of the 
moral character demanded in the rulers of a free re- 



24 

public, under the instruction and guardianship of his 
Holy Word ! That Word declares that : He who ruleth 
over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. 
That Word declares: Thou shalt provide out of all 
the people, able men, such as fear God, men of 
truth, hating covetousness ; and place such over them, 
to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds; 
yea more, to be rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. 
In a government like this we can do without splen- 
dor of intellect, without brilliancy of orator}', yea, 
even without profound statemanship. One thing we 
can not do without. We can not do without Iloncxtij, 
without moral integrity in our rulers. No Christian, 
nay more, no man, who believes that there sits in 
the heavens a just and righteous God, who watches 
over the destinies of nations, has any right to cast 
his vote, at the dictation of any party, or in view 
of any scheme of self-interest, for a man as a ruler, 
the soundness of whose moral character he has reason- 
able occasion to question. If he does, let him close his 
mouth in shame when he finds in office bad and 
wicked men, who do not represent his own views 
of national righteousness, or of a just line of na- 
tional policy. He himself has sanctioned a principle 
which utterly disarms him of every reasonable pre- 
text for refusing a hearty support to the powers 
that be. — But even if this is not the case, and if he 



25 

has never thus profaned the high and solemn re- 
sponsibility of the elective franchise, and had and 
covetous men, nevertheless, by sophistry and chicane, 
have grasped the reins of power, he would do well, 
before he resorts to the delusive remedy of faction, 
solemnly to ask himself whether he has fully dis- 
charged his duty as a citizen : whether he has done, 
and is doing, all that in him lies to purify the 
fountains of power, by educating, enlightening, and 
endeavoring to shape the popular mind, and by im- 
buing it with a sense of responsibility to God and 
to mankind, for the manner in which it dares to 
exercise the high functions of American citizenship. 
Here lies the true and effectual remedy for all the 
evils which can arise in a free government like our 
own. It is the only political remedy allowable to 
a just, conscientious, and God-fearing man. God has 
taught us to pray for kings, and for all that are in 
authority. He has nowhere taught us to revile and 
oppose them. On the contrary, he has taught us that 
whosoever resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance 
of God, and that they that resist shall receive to 
themselves damnation. 

It remains to say, before I conclude, that this voice 
from heaven, interpreted by the voice of revelation, 
seems to speak to us to-day, saying: 



26 

III. Have faith in the Providence of God. 

God lias delivered us in six troubles, let us be sure 
that in the seventh no evil shall befall us, which shall 
peril the life of the nation. He has brought light out 
of darkness, order out of confusion, victory out of de- 
feat, inexhaustible national resources out of the perils 
of national bankruptcy ; an ever waxing population out 
of the immense and terrible slaughter of civil war. 
The starry flag of the Union waves to-day, in the 
triumph of God's holy retribution for treason, over the 
very city where secession had its birth; over the very 
fortress where the madness of treason struck it dowu 
in dishonor. The spirit of God has waked in the 
hearts of our people an intense loyalty, which Ave had 
not even imagined to exist, sleeping as it did unseen 
beneath the superficial guise of an apparently entire 
national engrossment in the arts of peace and in the 
pursuit of gain. We have been called a covetous 
and grasping people. It was always a libel on the 
nation, and, God be thanked, now we know it to 
have been a libel. The accumulations of years have 
been poured out like water in the cause of the 
country. Never has the earth witnessed such im- 
mense and costly offerings as have been laid by 
private citizens in this war upon the altar of an 
imperilled country. Our chivalrous foes have stig- 
matized us as a nation of boors, of hinds, of mini- 



•li 

sills ; ■ — tliey Lave been taught to know how much 
valor lies hid beneath the rough exterior of the 
sons of labor, who have breathed all their lives the 
atniosjniere of freedom; and been taught all their lives 
to acknowledge and worshij) God. The nation was 
never before so great, so strong, so free, so patriotic, 
so rich in everything which constitutes national dignity 
and national power as it is to-day. Its government is, 
at this moment, I verily believe it, the strongest 
government upon the globe. Who hath poured into 
the heart of the nation this spirit ? Who hath poured 
out upon us, as from a cloud bursting under its 
freight of blessing, these immense resources of wealth 
and of men? Can we have any doubt? It is the 
God of our fathers, and our God. It is God, and not 
man who hath gotten us the victory. And now, when 
this last supreme agony is rending the heart of the 
nation, how are we to interpret it \ Are we to yield 
to despondency, and imagine that God has forsaken 
us ? No, my friends, no ! That is not its meaning. 
He is purging us still more, that is all. He is bid- 
ding us with a still louder voice to lift up our eyes 
to him, and to acknowledge him as the God of the na- 
tion. He is saying to us, with the most solemn, 
piercing, and yet reassuring accents, with which the 
voice of his Providence has yet fallen upon the ears 
of the nation : " Be still, and know of a surety that 



28 

I am God." " Fear not, for I am with tliee ; be not 
dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen 
thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee 
with the right hand of my righteousness. 11 It is yet 
too early to interpret the full meaning of this last 
awful Providence of God. ' But look at it from two 
points of view. Abraham Lincoln was in danger of 
becoming the nation's idol. He was" so gentle, so 
honest, so magnanimous, so unselfish, so forgiving; his 
measures had been crowned with such astonishing and 
unlooked-for success, that there may have been danger 
that the nation, forgetting God, would fix its eyes 
upon him alone as the national Saviour and Re- 
deemer. God hath taken away our head, as he took 
away Moses from his chosen people, that we might 
not worship him. From the summit of our national 
Nebo he permitted him to gaze upon the land of 
promise, and then hid his mortal body from our eyes, 
lest we should pay to him the homage for a de- 
liverance wrought out by God alone. Look at it from 
another point of view. Abraham Lincoln died at the 
very zenith of his fame. lie had done his work, and, 
as Homulus was rapt in a chariot of flame from the 
gaze of his astonished countrymen, so has he been 
rapt from the eyes of the nation, that he might live 
an almost spotless character, embalmed forever in the 
nation's heart, as the patron saint of its consummated 



20 

liberty. He has done, and done nobly and well, the 
work for which he was the chosen instrument of God. 
There remains still for the entire pacification of the 
countrv, the sreat work of Reconstruction. Who can 
assure us that the characteristics of our departed 
President, now of deathless and glorious memory, 
would have fitted him to accomplish with equal suc- 
cess a work like that? ISTo man can say that they 
would not. No man can say that they would. One 
thing is certain, God has taken it out of his hands, 
and has assumed it himself. There are doubts, and 
fears, and indistinctness of vision, and conflicting- 
theories upon this great subject rife throughout the 
land. " What shall be done with the black man ? " 
you remember it well, was the horror -cry of the na- 
tion at the opening of the war. It was the Gor- 
dian knot which no human ingenuity could untie. 
Our late venerated President himself did not com- 
prehend the solution of the problem. His words 
and his acts alike confessed it. But he placed him- 
self in the hands of God, and God's Providence 
guided him to the solution. There exists no longer 
a doubt in the mind of any man, what is to be 
done with the black man. And now one more 
problem only remains to be solved, the great prob- 
lem of Reconstruction. Let us be sure God's Pro- 
vidence will solve it and solve it aright. It is not 



30 

to be solved by doubts, nor fears, nor sympathies, 
nor antipathies, nor theories. It is not to be solved 
by man. It is to be solved by the holy Provi- 
dence of God. From this point of view, very much 
do I incline to the sentiment of the orator of Fort 
Sumter: "It needs neither architect, nor engineer." 
God's Providence will build strongly and well the 
broken arches and buttresses of the temple of na- 
tional freedom. "After the combatant," says De Toc- 
queville, "comes the legislator. The one pulls down, 
the other builds up. Each lias his office." In a 
Republic like ours, the two functions are distinct, 
and belong to distinct branches of the government. 
God has guided the one. God will guide the other. 
Of one thing we may be sure. This last atrocious 
deed has taught the whole land the meaning; of 
Treason / has convinced the whole land that it is 
a ciime as much blacker and more horrible than 
simple murder, as the life of a great nation is more 
precious than the life of a single man. Of another 
tiling we may be sure. We have been taught what 
Justice is. If standing among the thick heaped 
mounds of our patriot-dead, slaughtered by hundreds 
of thousands in this unholy rebellion, " until every 
drop of blood drawn by the lash has been paid by 
another drawn by the sword," we could have been 
persuaded by any sophistical argument derived from 



31 

the God -likeness of mercy, to receive the plotters 
and leaders of this awful crime into our confidence, 
we can be persuaded no longer. This last crime of 
ineffable turpitude has heaped up in the very heart 
of the nation a mound so broad and so long; it has 
piled it so high with mingled emotions of grief, horror 
and indignation, nay, with its deepest and most re- 
ligious sentiment of the righteousness and the duty of 
retributive justice, that no arm of reconstruction will 
be lon«; enough to reach over that mountain of woe, 
and grasp in its own the red right hand of Treason. 
The plotters and leaders in this terrible work of 
attempted national assassination are doomed. They 
are doomed. The mark of Cain is in their foreheads. 
And, at the very best, driven forth from the land 
whose soil they have polluted with Treason and 
drenched in blood, they are destined henceforth to 
become fugitives and vagabonds in the earth. 

And now, O God, thou God of our Fathers, be 
thou our God, and the God of our children for- 
ever. Clouds and darkness are round about thee ; 
but righteousnes and judgment are the habitation of 
thy throne. Shrouded in these weeds of mourning, 
from the depths of our national woe, we still lift 
up our eyes unto Thee. Accept, we beseech thee, 
this awful bajriism of blood in expiation of a na- 



32 

tion's sins. For four long and fearful years thy 1 tan- 
ner over us lias been a banner of war, rent by the 
storm of battle, and stained with the life-blood of 
the slain. If thy strange work of retribution is not 
yet complete, still go forth with our patriot hosts, 
we implore thee, and guide our captains to victory. 
Yet we humbly supplicate thy mercy. Let the sac- 
rifice already offered suffice. Henceforth, may thy 
banner over us be Love. Teach all our people to 
know Thee and to fear Thee. Guide our Rulers. 
Inspire them with thine own Spirit of Wisdom, Jus- 
tice, Mercy, and Truth. Make our judges as at the 
first, and our counsellors as at the beginning. 
Henceforth may we be called the nation of right- 
eousness; the faithful nation. Purged from the stains 
of our national transgressions, may this great people 
live before the Lord, our God, redeemed, purified, 
holy, free; and to thy great Name shall be the 
glory forever, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 



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